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Hyq – The Four-legged Robot For Disaster Zones

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It's official. Google has finally entered the race for home automation. So far, the only premium choices available for integrating the different devices in your smart home were Amazon Echo and Apple Home. That meant choosing between a flawed monopoly and a smartphone application. No matter which one you owned, you would always remain at the risk of being underwhelmed and forced into constriction by a single franchise. However, with the introduction of Google Home, things have turned a bit flexible in the realm of home automation, giving birth to a rather healthy competition.

Let's face it. As huge as Amazon may be in the eCommerce market, it is still ways from achieving a monopoly over our smart lives. It doesn't have its own smart OS, neither does it release any significant line of hardware other than the Kindle Fire. Thus, Amazon still has little control over our lives when we are not in the mood for basking in the goodness of retail therapy. Google, on the other hand, has been a significant part of our everyday lives for quite some time, rivaled only by Microsoft and Apple. We can't go past a single hour of our average day without looking something up on its massive search engine, not to mention the fact that almost every smart device we own is wired up using its gigantic Android operating system. Thus, Google Home is already at an advantage as it easily builds in with our Google-driven lifestyle, allowing for smoother integration with our Google-powered devices.

Given that Google started out as an information hub rather than a commercial giant, it is only obvious that it has a headstart as far as behavioral analytics is concerned. While Amazon has the latest hardware, Google stands out with its experience in studying and manipulating the world wide web. Naturally, Google's new artificial intelligence software, known as Google Assistant, is smarter than Alexa, the voice service utilized by Amazon Echo. Not only does the Google Assistant make it easier for you to issue commands by voice, it also boasts the capability of being able to understand and follow up on complicated commands that would leave the old Google Home scratching its head. Some people have gone so far as to say that the Google Assistant is even better than Apple's Siri, or at least more exciting for the time. The Google Home clearly has an edge over its competitors here as it empowers our smart home with the ability to answer complex questions faster and provide the user with more options to run with.

Finally comes the issue of compatibility. Amazon Echo has been trying really hard for some time now to provide support for some of the more popular smart home services and applications. However, from a prospective viewpoint, Google seems to have a better chance at bringing more and more services on board with its program. Google Home, although far newer, has announced that not only will it be completely compatible with all 'Works with Nest' products, but also expand its list of compatible services through an increasing list of partners via Google for voice. Given Google's history of working together with partners to develop better end products, it is likely to make good on that promise.

Efficient, convenient and capable. The vision for the perfect smart home is quite apparent. What remains yet to be seen is how the major tech giants of today come up with the best of technologies to make this dream come true. While the stars may be on Google's side for the time being, one shouldn't dare underestimate what Apple or Amazon can come up with to level the competition.